Friday, July 31, 2009

Someone should tell Rodney Hide to tell Sir Roger Douglas to go and get some PR lessons.

Labour Party people will be laughing their heads off as the silly old duffer takes ALL the flak for ALL MPs who have 'overused' their parliamentary perks. His arrogant quip "I'm entitled to take a holiday" is inflammatory and stupid.

Instead of focusing on the exorbitant use of travel allowances for party purposes as practiced by Phil Goff, the media are having a picnic pursuing Sir Roger's personal first class family visit to the UK. Unfortunately for ACT, ordinary voters strongly resent MP's slurping up taxpayers hard earned for personal pleasure and Roger Douglas has made himself the figurehead for this resentment. He has become the archetypal slurper. A rich prick who doesn't need the money but is in for every penny he can get. Whether or not that is true, doesn't matter. It is now the entrenched perception.

Singlehandedly, he has destroyed Rodney Hide's reputation as a 'perk buster.'

I'm afraid the events of the last two days have turned him into an electoral liability for his party. It would be as well if he does not allow his name to be put forard in 2011.

Audrey Young is onto it:-

"Act's Sir Roger Douglas, Parliament's most vocal campaigner against wasteful spending of taxpayers' money, was among the highest-spending non-ministers."

23 comments:

Anonymous
said...

thought exactly the same. had he merely said that includes some spending as part of my superannuation entitlements it would have mitigated the fallout. Once labour, always Labour when it comes to entitlement, hmmm?

Given citizens now have financial information deemed "open to the public" when are all of the Minister's financial activities be open to the OIA. They conveniently exempt themselves from the same scrutiny, and the public doesn't have the capability to find out and simply announce the figures "in the interests of transparency"

It's interesting to me that Sir Roger would have been entitled to 90% of his and his wife's overseas airfares had he been an MP or not, so the facts surrounding his spending are a little different to all the other MPs. It is probable that if those airfares are deducted from the amount, he would have spent about the same as the other ACT MPs.

Sir Roger was made to look as though he was suffering from an advanced case of Entitleitis

And nobody has just pointed out this is nothing but lefty media payback!

Sir Roger is one of the greatest living Kiwis. He - of all people - is surely actually "entitled" to a UK Holiday. Hell he deserves it! Completely unlikely beneficiaries and bludgers. This is absolutely nothing but an MSM beat-up - and Nominister and Whale should stand against it - not call for him to resign!

"He - of all people - is surely actually "entitled" to a UK Holiday. Hell he deserves it!"

So Sinner, we abolish all welfare and state funding of health and education, but it's OK Roger you can keep your freebie first class holidays to Europe. Nice to know where you're coming from. You're Roger's mum aren't you?

So Sinner, we abolish all welfare and state funding of health and education,

yes of course

but it's OK Roger you can keep your freebie first class holidays to Europe. Nice to know where you're coming from. You're Roger's mum aren't you?Again yes of course. Health and welfare cost billions and go to the undeserving. Parliamentary pensions and travel goes either to the deserving or to members of the Labour party - and of course the latter should be jailed. But in any case, they cost only hundreds of thousands, or millions. It's completely and utterly unrelated.

No Sinner, it's a discussion about the best way to spend limited taxpayer funds. You want to take money of the gainfully employed and give it to multimillionaires to take first-class holidays overseas. Nice.

Good point OECD, this is indeed a beat up. If Sir Roger earned this privilege then surely he should be allowed to take advantage of it. Putting into perspective the fact he hardly ever uses this entitlement and is one of the few politicians who really does practise what he preaches - I find the wailing from the centrists a little, "Labour" like.

Why is Bill English getting $1000 a week for his family home. Oh I hear National is defending the payments as within the rules. $1000 a week is a hellava lot more than one little trip to London.

1) How much should MPs be entitled to? Time for a SERIOUS discussion on that.

2) Once rationalised as above, how should MPs access their entitlements in a rational, moral, flexible manner? Time MPs had a SERIOUS discussion on that! (as in: You don't have to be a saint, but you don't have to be a Bernie Madoff either).

While Rogers example isn't a good look I would point out that unlike nearly all the others he's actually earned a little slack as he saved NZ billions with his reforms and so a few thou for a trip to Britain is small recompense all things considered.

Add in the fact that if he had his way perks like this would decrease massivley he's still holding the high ground against all comers...

In that case Zen, Roger is entitled to hand maidens for eternity and his flights to be on a gold plated concorde. His results both in NZ and grateful other countries are proof he is indeed entitled to it.